


it's the side effects that save us

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Older Man/Younger Woman, POV Phil Coulson, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Romance, angsty sex, motel sex, post-episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 18:42:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1575635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He knows what comes next, but he had imagined the shape of it and the feel of it would be different – he had meant to do this in joy and affection, not defeat.</i> </p><p>(Post-episode, spoilers for 1x20 "Nothing Personal")</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's the side effects that save us

**Author's Note:**

> I know I have written the same fic twice in a row. This is the "I just wanted to write some motel room smut" version, forgive me.

He is sitting on his bed.

"His" is an exaggeration – his _for now_ is better, narrow, humble bed with headboard of cheap wood and sheets of cheap linen. 

May has left some time ago and he is sitting on his bed. Waiting for something, perhaps. 

Holding his breath, waiting for his body to start or to stop, waiting for system failure or reprise, he doesn't know. He is a damned man, either way. If he's even a man at this point.

Or he is waiting for something else altogether, perhaps.

There's a knock on the door.

He opens the door, because what choice does he have.

"Hey. I thought you were coming back to talk. I was waiting for you." Skye waltzes in, like it's her own room.

He pauses, doesn't reply. He knows what comes next, he knows it like an ugly weight at the bottom of his stomach. He knows what comes next, but he had imagined the shape of it and the feel of it would be different – he had meant to do this in joy and affection, not defeat. He knows what comes next so why wait.

He walks towards her with intent, backing her against the wall.

He is not saying anything. Skye is looking at him like he's lost his mind because he is not talking and Coulson thinks he might as well have lost his mind, or maybe that's starting right now. He wants to touch her but that's not new, it's not something that's starting now.

His hands reach for her neck, her cheeks. Skye doesn't step back, doesn't flinch, even though she gives him a questioning look.

"Coulson?"

It's unfair, she should have been here an hour ago, thirty minutes ago, she should have been here twenty years ago – before everything was ruined. His hands shake as he grabs her face and he thinks _it's starting_ before realizing it's Skye, it's all Skye, always has been.

He pushes his face close to hers and Skye draws a long breath, like she's bracing herself but not bracing herself for something bad, more like bracing herself for something she's been wanting, perhaps. No, not perhaps. He is _sure_. He knows inside this second that she'll let him kiss her, and she'll let him fuck her, and she'll let him destroy everything.

He kisses her anyway.

She opens her mouth under his so easily it almost pains him.

Coulson thinks he can taste the last trace of chocolate when he slides his tongue into her mouth. It makes his stomach drop, but not enough to stop kissing her. He kisses her harder instead. Yes, that makes sense.

He's pinning her against the wall but Skye is pushing back with her body and at the same time holding him close, grabbing his shoulders so tightly he thinks she might bruise him. He stops kissing her mouth and starts drawing the trail down her jaw and her neck towards the skin between her breasts, the path shaped by her shirt, its two top, undone buttons. She is talking now, saying something, but he wants to stay here, face buried in her neck, smelling the day on her – he can feel the fear and cold sweat under the scent of cheap soap from her hurried visit to the public toilets. He knows this, he was with her, he can taste all the things she still hasn't told him about yesterday. She is talking.

"The way you were looking at me all evening... I thought... maybe. But I didn't know. Not for sure, anyway. Not like this."

"Yes," he replies, because he doesn't want to hear her say anything else right now. Because _Yes_ is almost accurate.

He knows what he feels, that's not the problem. He knows what he feels but that doesn't matter anymore.

He pushes her against the wall again, doesn't let her breathe unless she breathes with him, matching the rhythms of pull or push until she bites his lower lip and Coulson groans and thinks about fucking her against the wall, with her legs around his waist. He hooks his fingers under her leather jacket and peels it off her, feeling for the shape of her bones underneath, the line of her neck and collarbone.

Desire for Skye is nothing new; he has been pushing it down, swallowing it, ignoring its symptons, pretending it didn't exist, for a long time. The virulence of it is new, though, and he follows it without thinking, blindly, he presses his erection against her stomach and Skye moans against his neck.

He grabs her by the hips and maneuvers both of them towards the bed. The narrow motel room bed.

"Coulson," she says, like a question or a plea.

He pushes her into the matress and it feels so good, to climb on top of her and put his weight on her, his whole body in her hands to take care of it or undo it, whatever luck he happens to run into – except he is a man out of luck, he knows this. He is a man, he repeats over and over in his mind, he is not some defective apparatus.

" _Coulson_ ," she calls again in thirst, one hand pulling at his shirt and the other pulling him against her, unable to decide what she wants right now.

Skye arches up against him, legs around his waist, her whole body ready to welcome every touch, hungry for him in a way Coulson doesn't remember anybody before. Or maybe he just doesn't remember. She lets out such a content and trusting sigh when he positions himself between her legs and Coulson knows he can't go through with this. He can't.

"I can't do this," he breathes out, climbing off her in one movement.

Skye props herself on her elbows, cheeks flushed deep pink, a hurt expression on her face.

"Why? Did I...?"

He shakes his head, chuckles in an ugly way. He wants this so fucking much. He can't go through with it. He loves her so fucking much. He can't do it.

He's a broken toy, he is the unexpected villain of the picture, he is a hypocrite, he's not a man, and Skye shouldn't have to pay the price, shouldn't have to be someone who tries to save him. Skye is free and whole and strong. He's drowning, but he wants her firm on dry land. It's not her fault.

"I'm lying to you," he says. "I can't do this, it would be a lie."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not the man you think I am. I'm not the man _I_ thought I was."

Her glance darkens – he can imagine what's going through her mind right now.

"Coulson, you're scaring me."

"You need to see something," he says, already reaching for the computer May left in his room.

 

+

 

He goes out while she watches the video.

The night is crisp and not as nice at before, but he could be imagining it of course.

When Skye comes out to join him again he can see it on her face, but specially in her shoulders, the weight of it, the trauma of what she's just seen. She's looking at Coulson's frame like she is trying to match that horror with the man in front of her.

"Okay?" he asks.

She doesn't answer the question.

She makes that face where she blinks slowly and purses her lips; it's an expression of hurt and disappointment he's seen a couple of times. Then he watches her push it down, bite it, conceal it.

"So that was you, uh?"

"Yes."

She puts her head into her hands, breathing into her fingers and massaging her nose. He doesn't know what the neutrality of her expression means right now, apart from profound exhaustion.

"I don't think I like the man I was very much," he says. He thinks it's the first time he's said this out loud, even though it's been on his mind for a long time. He tried to tell Akela about it, but he wasn't sure what he meant then, it was a half-formed thought that had been gnawing at him since he woke up after Tahiti. Perhaps it had been his own brain trying to confess.

"Are we going to be all right?" she asks. She's still not looking at him. She's hugging herself, jacket tightly held around her sides, and she is looking up at the night sky.

"I don't know."

She makes an _uhm_ noise and continues watching the night. You can't see stars in L.A. he thinks idly.

"You think there's a chance you'll get those memories back?" she asks.

"There's Raina's machine..."

"Which Garret has now," Skye reminds him, by the tone she seems to be reminding herself as well.

"Yeah."

A beat.

"Maybe I wouldn't want to get those memories back, anyway," he adds.

Skye turns to look at him. He knows what she's thinking, he knows he's a coward, he knows Skye wouldn't run away like this.

"I'm going to need a minute here," she says.

 _I didn't have a minute_ , he thinks. _You knocked on my door, I didn't have the time to prepare. You knocked._

"I'm sorry," he says, not exactly knowing what that means.

Skye looks at him, hard and clear, and says nothing for a moment.

Then: "You look tired."

"I feel old."

"Yeah me too," she says.

He watches her hug herself tighter, like she might shiver, like the air is colder than it actually is.

"Maybe I shouldn't have shown it to you," Coulson wonders out loud.

"No, it's –" she rubs her face with the back of her hand, sighing audibly. "Seeing you like that... it was – it's hard."

A leaf falls on the pool in front of them, travelling across tiny streetlights reflected in the water, cutting through them. Skye watches it for a long time, a serious, thoughtful expression on her face. Without her make-up on, Coulson reflects, she looks younger and older at the same time.

"The man you were, whoever that was, in the end he tried to stand up," she says, eventually. Still it doesn't sound like she is excusing him. "And they took that away from you."

They took everything, he thinks. Starting with the future. But after what he had done he can't say he didn't deserve it – the cruel irony of it all.

"Maybe I deserved that," he says. Maybe he shouldn't have that one sudden attack of conscience to fall back on, to exonerate what he did, what they all did. Maybe it's fitting he doesn't remember.

Skye doesn't reply to that, she makes a noncommittal sound, clicking her tongue.

"This is why you didn't want to...?" she starts asking but then she trails off. This is the first time he has seen her reticent to speak about sex at all.

"My brain and my body... I don't know what they are anymore, what's going to happen to them tomorrow, or five minutes from now."

"SHIELD did that to people?" she asks, heartbroken. Her eyes, which normally look older than her age, seem ancient now.

I did that to people, he thinks. He wants to tell her that, but he can't risk her thinking it's self-pity. He can't risk Skye pitying _him_ for it.

"I think I'll go in now," he says, feeling he's exhausted anything he can possibly say to her right now. The rest would be excuses and she deserves better than excuses from a man who has caused so much pain. The rest would be excuses and Coulson would never want to make excuses for himself.

He turns to leave.

"Coulson, wait." 

She grabs his wrist. Coulson looks down at it, her fingers curled in a tight grip around the curve of his bones and the beat of his pulse. He doesn't understand, the gesture or the feel of it.

"I'm not leaving you alone tonight," she says vehemently.

She says that.

Even after everything, Skye says this.

 

+

 

She presses her hand against his chest.

"I don't want to be alone right now, either," she says.

They're under the covers but Skye hasn't undressed. He's in his t-shirt and boxers but she became suddenly shy and is attempting to go to sleep in shirt and jeans. The bed is way too narrow for two people but she didn't want to take the other bed. He nods at her and turns on his side, so he has his back to her, so that he's looking outside the window, watching traffic lights and polluted sky on the reflections of the pool. He feels Skye move behind him – a soft rustle of bedsheets, of fabric against fabric and Coulson wonders if she isn't hot in all those clothes – and he can feel her body heat near but she is not touching him.

Or rather, she is not touching him yet.

He feels better now; not comforted by hopelessness and cold air. Instead full of quiet possibility. Even if Skye wouldn't let him touch her again, even if whatever was hanging between them this evening is gone after she's heard of Project TAHITI, even so she's here right now, with him, and that means something. It means he no longer feels like his mind and his body are going to fail him any second now, and his capacities go out one by one, like snuffed candles.

The sheets move and then he feels her breasts pressed against his back. Coulson makes an effort not to flinch from the unbearable pull of desire tugging at him. 

"Ward said he was a bad man and that I was good," Skye tells him. You are good, Coulson thinks, but quite possibly not in the way someone like Ward knows how to understand the term. "I don't think he knew what those words meant. Good is something you work at, every day. And I have failed, sometimes, but I still try. People try."

She snakes one arm around his waist, placing her open palm over his heart. Coulson hisses, low, at the contact. Then her mouth settles against his shoulder, breathing hot air through the fabric of his clothes. Skye speaks into the curve of his neck.

"I've done things, I've been in dark places, too. It's unfair to – _please_ , Coulson, tell me you understand that."

He puts his hand over hers, breathing in to press his ribcage against her touch.

She grips his shoulder and pulls at him, making Coulson turn on his back and then on his right side, until they are face to face again.

"Skye," he calls. What can he say, that he understands? He does, but he still knows so little about her, at the end of the day – and Skye knows even less about him and he wants to tell her everything and hear everything from her, but it's not safe. It's never been safe.

"I need you to see me," she says, so low Coulson could almost pretend he hasn't heard, except he could never do that. "You get that, right?"

He nods. 

He wants to kiss her. 

He doesn't kiss her.

They go to sleep.

 

+

 

When he wakes up the watch on the bedside table says ten past four and everything is embedded in a soft, innocent darkness, and it takes Coulson a bit to realize he has been woken by Skye's movements behind him on the bed.

He turns around and she is struggling to take off her jeans, legs perched over a bundle of bedsheets and blankets.

"What are you doing?"

"These are very uncomfortable to sleep in."

With some difficulty she manages to get rid of them. Coulson doesn't meant to stare but he fixes his gaze on her legs, barely silhouetted under the late-night lights, from the road and from the pool and the unblinking motel sign. Blue and red on Skye's dark skin.

"Don't worry," she tells him when she catches him looking. "Just go back to sleep."

He swallows, he has the feeling naked desire must be written all over his face.

"I couldn't sleep now," he says, and it's the absolute truth.

He lifts his hand to touch her leg but she stops him, gripping his wrist.

"When you kissed me last night... Was it just because of the video? Because of... what you had done?"

He doesn't want to lie to her; even if he finds the truth a lot scarier than a lie. So he chooses to tell the truth. 

He shakes his head. "No."

Skye kisses him, pushing him down – kissing him hard enough that he feels himself sinking into the cheap matress. She only lets him go, for a moment, to get rid of her shirt and her underwear. He wants her to stop, slow down, so he can look at her, but she doesn't. 

She reaches her hand between their bodies, fingers quickly feeling for his erection through his boxers.

"Skye... are you sure about this? After what you've found out about me?"

"I want this," she says quietly, voice full of arousal and intent, the end of any argument; Coulson doesn't recognize that voice, never thought he'd heard something like that from Skye. And he knows it's for him, that voice, it's all for him. He had wanted to give her more, everything, but specially a lot more than just a middle-age washout who'll probably start literally unravelling in front of her one of these days. He had wanted much more for her but Skye hasn't, and she always knows better and he trusts her in this.

He lets her start to undress him.

Skye tugs at his t-shirt, trying to roll it up and take it off but he hesitates, brushing his fingertips across her wrist. She nods and takes his hand, pressing it against her stomach. At first the only thing he feels is the uneven rhythm of her breathing against his palm, muscles contracting around desire and anticipation. But there it also is: the shape of her wound, the scarred bits left behind above her navel. It's strange to feel the roughness of the spot, magically healed as it seems to be, because the skin surrounding it is so soft that it seems vulnerable by comparsion. Skye is strong there, in the boundary, between the perceived softness of the body and the hard material underneath. Coulson understands – he removes his hand and starts pulling his t-shirt over his head, with Skye's help, impatient fingernails scrapping lightly over the skin of his forearms, his shoulders.

She slides her whole body against his, now there's no clothing between them, just their completely different completely matching bodies and the way she climbs on top of him to straddle his hips.

She wraps her hand around his cock to guide him. She's wet already and Coulson doesn't know why that surprises him but it does.

The darkness makes them move with care, and Coulson has to _not feel_ it all, not at the same time, or he'll make a fool of himself. She moves over him, sitting up, rolling her hips in sync with his breathing, in sync with his pulse locked under her hands and inside her.

He grabs at the ends of her hair; in this darkness it's hard to see it's lighter there. He remembers more than sees her at this point. But the feeling of her skin against his hands, that's new, something he didn't know before. The weight of her on him, around him. He brings her down towards him, catching her breast between his fingers and putting his mouth against her nipple. Skye gasps, a tiny noise of surprise as he uses his tongue and his teeth and as he bends her further so that the angle is exactly right, so that every time he thrusts up or she pushes down it's _exactly right_.

When she finally comes she comes in complete silence, without a sound. Coulson can only feel it. She closes her eyes tightly and her fingernails dig into his stomach, but not enough that they hurt him. The skin on the inside of her thighs feels like it's burning pressed to the sides of his hips. He wants to study her face as she rides it out but it's too dark, it's too fucking dark and Coulson feels helpless not being able to see her clearly.

He grabs her hips in his hands and pulls her off him. Skye looks at him, surprised, until he puts one hand on her shoulder and pushes her into the matress again. She understands and reaches her arms up to his ribs as Coulson turns over and pins her against the bed with his chest, both of them a heaving, writhing mess.

Their faces are too close now, their breathing labored and matched. Coulson remembers the lack of this kind of intimacy in his life – he hasn't been like this with another person since before he died. He grips her left knee, swinging her leg over his hip to position himself again, holding back the moment of connection for some reason he cannot guess at right now.

He wants to kiss her.

He doesn't kiss her.

He doesn't kiss her yet.

There's a difference, there's a big fucking difference, if you ask Coulson.

He brushes the hair off her face, presses his thumb along her cheekbone. Skye has her eyes closed, trembling slightly under him, waiting for him to be inside her again. He repeats her name, over and over until she opens her eyes.

"Let me see you."

Skye nods.

He kisses her smile.

 

+

 

The room smells of sex and the blinds are open and there's a soft pale light everywhere.

In the narrow bed Skye sleeps with one leg draped over his knee, and her head tucked under his shoulder.

Before he realizes she is awake, clear-eyed but quiet against his chest, breathing evenly. He tangles one hand in her hair, slowly and just as quietly, feeling the muscles at the back of her neck. They take a moment before acknowledging the other, a moment in which they are both alone in the other's arms. 

"Hey, the sun is rising," Skye says, staring out of the window.

She gets a strange faraway look in her eyes Coulson can't quite decipher. He wonders if she is okay, if she regrets it. She doesn't seem regretful, though, just pensive. Coulson puts his mouth to the side of her head without thinking.

Her lips curl upwards.

But then she moves quickly, propping herself on her knees and fumbling for her clothes. The flash of her naked in pure sunlight baffles Coulson, like he can't place an image like that, next to him, within his reach. She moves without modesty, like she is used to his gaze, like they could be doing this every morning.

"What are you doing?" he asks, wanting to reach out and stop her somehow.

But she doesn't stop, she fishes her underwear from between the tangled sheets. She shoots a knowing grin Coulson's way.

"I'm going to throw on some clothes and go out for a minute and get a ton of stuff from the vending machine so we can have a vending machine breakfast in bed," she explains. "Because that's what you do when you live in a motel. I must teach you the ways."

He smiles at her.

"That's nice, " Skye says, reaching out his hand to trace the upturned curve of his lips with her thumb.

"Skye." Nothing else. Just her name. That's enough. The way it tastes it in his mouth, with the early sunlight and her nakedness and his love for her. 

She puts on her jeans and shirt. "One thing, though. I don't have any money."

"My wallet's over there," he gestures.

She raises one eyebrow.

"Great sex and you pay for breakfast? Careful, Coulson, a girl might get ideas."

She gets the cash while Coulson looks at the curve of her back, the shirt falling loosely on her shoulders. He should have kissed those shoulders more last night, he tells himself. He should have done everything more, slower, better. He wants to do it all again.

When Skye turns around he holds out his hand, not wanting to grab her arm, not wanting to stop her by force, or impose. She comes back to him, offering her fingers, brushing them across his palm.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

Skye nods and in a moment her hand is reaching for his head, her fingers caressing his temple, hairline traced carefully like she wants to remember every inch of skin, every line, every hair starting to gray, taking all of him without hesitation.

"I didn't tell you last night, and I don't know why but... I was thinking about it the whole time, just – you are exactly the man I thought you were."

She bends her head to kiss him, opening his mouth with her thumb pushing at his jaw. She kisses slow like morning light. 

Coulson feels whole, and if not exactly unbreakable he feels solid and firm, _strong_ , and here, here right in this moment of her mouth exploring his like Skye wants to memorize him with endless patience, with all the time in the world.

"So..." he says, pulling away, touching the ends of her hair, how its color is lighter there; he has missed seeing her in daylight. "Vending machine breakfast?"

Skye grins, crushing her grin against his mouth, sighing, "Coulson, I'm going to teach you how to live."

Of that he has no doubt, Coulson thinks, slipping one hand around her waist.

It's just a joke but he thinks, yes, yes, Skye, that's right.

How to _live_.


End file.
